I’m not entirely sure when the change happened. It’s hard to tell when you get so involved with something as when a particular inflection point could be said to have Definitely Happened.
When I first noticed that it had happened was when I was discussing (I think on the Sports Interactive forums, although it may have been in a Discord of a moderately well-known Football Manager streamer) what the best approach was for a player new to the Football Manager series.
It used to be that the best way to start playing Football Manager was to take over (i.e. appoint yourself as manager) one of the various huge, rich teams that stride the sport like colossi. Manchester United, with their domination of the English Premier League, was a popular choice. You’d have a squad full of talented players, which meant that even if you were figuring out what to do, that the team would still play well and you’d have loads of money to allow you to experiment with acquiring players.
If you do that now, things are not going to go well. The team will likely play poorly in ways that will be difficult to analyze, the players will chafe under your leadership, the board and fans will be relentlessly negative and odds are that you’ll be sacked (fired) before you hit the halfway point of your first season.
Instead, you’re better off taking over a tiny team in the lower leagues. The expectations won’t be high, so you’ll have time to figure things out, the squad may be terrible; however, so are all the other teams at your level. Because your players are so limited, what they’re good at and bad at will be a lot more obvious, and you can try and manage to emphasize the former and minimize the latter. And if you fail, hey, it’s not like Truro City are tearing it up in real life and you’re not going to be sitting there thinking “How can I fail at United?”
Something you see a lot of in the SI forums and other places FM player congregate are people who used to play the game years ago, all posting pretty much the same thing: “What’s happening? My team won’t do what I want them to do even though I’ve done the Things I Used to Do!”
This is because you used to be able to play Football Manager by setting a tactic that fit your players and had a fairly coherent overall plan, go to match, simulate through with highlights, then manage your squad over time, building it at as you saw fit as the seasons flew by.
Instead, if you want to do well in the current iteration of FM, you need to take your time. Make sure you have staff analyzing the opposition and then study those reports. What formation do they typically play? How high up is their defensive line? Do they rely on a single player for creativity going forward? Where do they like to deliever the ball on corner kicks? Then make adjustments to your team in turn. When the game actually starts, have the game on Full Match, and watch the players. Are your players doing what you want them to do? If not, why not? Make adjustments, like changing the mentality for one player, or the roles for a few players, etc.
The time that you used to spend playing five matches now accounts for probably just the one.
Anyway, Football Manager. It’s a game about controlling space. It’s a game about getting a bunch of fake-real players to work together only they’ll eventually get old and you’ll have to replace them. It’s one of those games that you can play forever. If you play it, post here! If you have questions about it, post here!
